“A woman was from Atlanta, and she told the room that a van was discovered in Ames, Iowa, at a Casey’s gas station, and I have never heard of human trafficking,” O’Connor said. “To hear that it happened at a gas station that I had probably been before, I just broke down in the room. I knew I had to do something about this.”

For the last two years, she’s been talking to youth at forums and fundraisers about the issue many aren’t aware of -- one that O’Connor says is not going away.

“Everyone is really at risk, and they will continue to be at risk until we end the problem,” she said.

O’Connor then started telling her friends about human trafficking.

“No one knew what happened. No one knew human trafficking existed and that it happened as frequently and prevalently in our state,” she said.It happened to Ruth Buckel’s foster daughter.

“She lived with me for about seven months before the telephone rang,” Buckel said.

“Finally the prosecutor said, ‘ma’am, we need to talk to Brittany because she is our witness,’ and I said, ‘witness to what?’ She said, ‘ma’am, Brittany has been trafficked,” recalls the foster mother.

“The kids will tell me. ‘My trafficker calls me between midnight and 4 a.m. in the middle of the night and then right after school between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. in the afternoon and my parents don’t even know that this person is blackmailing me to do these things,’' she said.

Lexi O’Connor is going off to college in New York this coming fall. She hopes to raise enough money to hire someone to run her nonprofit group.